Bird in the hand, two in the bush

For @Rin but others are welcome! Max 2 participants, please

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Everything was absurdly cold.

Farren wondered how the winds, once subdued and halfhearted, had swallowed the heavens themselves and enveloped her in a whirlwind of sudden calamity. What had begun as a teasing nibble at her nose now bit achingly at her body, howling in protest to the advances of her swarthy figure- which was, for the moment, spitting shards of jagged phrases at the force which had seemingly sent every fleck of blasted snow hurtling toward her raw complexion.

“проклятый ветер” — Curse this wind

Bombarded by pristine white and welling with half-frozen tears that threatened to spill from their ducts, Farren’s visage narrowed in submission to the gale’s relentless bluster. It roared and spat as if some sentient beast- and a beast it was, but so too was Farren, in her own right, as her brows gnarled and her legs pulsed forward. She began to recount a monotonous rhythm, a string of words that were stripped bare from her frozen lips; drowned out beneath the current of white noise. 

Suddenly, the rhythm faltered.

And the ground vanished from beneath her feet.

Her gut coiled, plummeting. Her legs kicked aimlessly and her claws scrabbled violently for a vantage that simply did not exist. The wind whispered, taunting, in her ear- lulling for one moment only to bellow furiously the next.

It was just wind, and yet…

Something felt horribly wrong.

It felt suffocating.

It felt heavy.

Breathe, her lungs begged, stewing in a fiery torpor of deprivation.

But she couldn’t. And the tumultuous space, vacant and blackened, had nothing left to give her.

They begged once more.

Again.

And again.

And of all the final thoughts that could intrude amidst the calamity, one came;

This was not a cool way to die.

But then…

A crackling of thunder.

A flash of blinding light.

Farren was here, wherever here was, and there was life.
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She wasn't there, then she was there.

In the midst of exploration of the tundra, Rin had found the end of so — where in the midst was the sea-salt that sung in the air. Yet that was not where her paws have traveled to, because rather there was an unusual land that hung at the bay of it's cliff. Wasn't a cave or a mountain, but a homage where the birds of the north croaked and wailed, a yawning sounds of beasts within the midst as each step she took, so did the dread within her heart. 

Tall pillars moaning, and wood creaking with each step she took, on a bridge that led her inside of.. Something, something she knew not except the word 'castle' lifting to her head as she traveled to. Endless pathways forming through as her head peered through the emptiness of the castle — where it seems even the wind whispered and sung, an eeriness brought to these empty halls as the doors themselves opened and slammed like a gust —

then there she was.

In the midst of this corridor, as the sky crackled and shone inside the darkness of the hallways, the breeze had ended.. With a wolf, standing in the midst of it all.

"oh."

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Creeeaak.

Splintered grains of wood erupted from the weathered surface of dilapidated floorboards, probing at the hardened edges of Farren’s feet. Once wild and galvanized to volatile action, her limbs remained rooted upon the foreign surface- as if filled to the brim with lead. Here, in the middle of bloody nowhere, she stood. Completely and wholly dumbstruck. Still, the air was tinged with frore and flooded her lungs with painful clarity- but no longer was the landscape a canvas of pristine white as it was before.

Before.

Before what, exactly?

What the hell had even happened?

None of it made any sense.

Creeeaak.

A whisper of wind, uncannily calm in comparison to the whirlwind of her transport, toyed gently with her earthen ruffles. It wound and coiled like a fickle serpent, ruminating within the empty space of her olfactories…

Evergreen.

Why did this place smell so strongly of pine in lieu of their absence?

Just as Farren would shamble backward to pinpoint the source of the sudden smell, a voice, spoken in a soft undertone of modulated sound, reached her upright ears. There, centered among grand pillars of cragged stone and impossible detail, stood a sterling wolf. As the wind jostled their fur and sprung loose the very origins of the smell, they remained. Quiet. Unassuming.

A bit too quiet and cavalier for Farren’s liking.

Now, Farren of all wolves held a strong backbone- but if she had just laid witness to some seemingly supernatural event and watched as a wolf had sprung out of thin air- even her ironbound nerves would be shaken. It was almost unsettling, the manner in which they stood directly before her, seemingly waiting, entirely unphased by whatever had just happened.

Were they…? No. They couldn’t be- those stories had merely been baseless claims to lay waste to the fickle nerves of pups. And yet, as Farren stooped lowly to clasp the tender skin of her forelimb within her teeth, pinching...

A trickle of crimson sprung from the delicate punctures. Eyes of gray and cerulean blue merged paths- one of calm and another harboring accusation.

“ведьма” — Witch

Accusatorily, defensively, Farren closed the narrowing gap between herself and the wintry wolf, circling her proximity as if a vulture waiting to swoop keenly on felled prey.

“Is that what you are?”
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She realized upon a closer look the other was not a wolf, or perhaps, some mix-breed of sorts. There was features that represented of another, especially as Rin's eyes glided to the tail that tossled unnaturally so upon her back. It was on the top of her tongue, like she knew of so but couldn't mutter what she thought of them ; at the very least, did not seem like someone of tundrian origins. They were brown, warm in tone but eyes spoke of gems itself.. She'd perhaps better be looked upon like a beauty if not for the hostile scowl she held against Rin.

"I do not speak your language,"

an unknown language and an unknown landing. Mystic arts appeared within thought with an amusing one of a witch as at the works, or even more Godless origins that happened. Especially even herself.. Entered this land without knowledge of how, or even why. But for some reason the woman accused the other of something, language not set for Rin only spoke french and English within a main.

She was looking at the other, unmoving despite how close she came.. Watching her with a caution.

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Despite her aggravated approach, the silvery woman maintained her air of calm. Unmoving. Wary. Farren’s mind was a jumbled mess of oxygen depravity and alarm that had run rampant- for where was she, truly? She had the sense to guess that she had been ripped, ripped from the weavings of her past life and sown into the fabric of the next. But it was a tattered sowing-together of sorts, one that had left tethers of string knotted at her feet, pulling taut in opposing directions. 

For all she knew, she’d nearly been killed by… something.

She didn’t know where she was.

She didn’t know what cruel force had tossed her here without a care in the world for the consequences that would follow.

Her nerves were frayed, rubbed raw- so much so that she hadn’t realized she’d been speaking in any language other than common tongue. Farren motioned at the forefront of the sterling woman, moving backward a few paces to conduct her own analysis- a practical one, this time. Her gaze swept across the tattered ruins of the inorganic structure, great beams and arches branching the space above their heads. After a pregnant moment of silence, Farren’s sight leveled toward that of the stranger, eyeing her up-and-down as if to confirm she was real and the recent events had truly taken place. 

“черт возьми.” — Damnit The curse flowed softly from her lips, in tandem with a billowing cloud of condensation.

“Are you familiar with this place?”
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short post

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Rin was eyeing them with a mild curiosity ; finding it slightly amusing how she was once within the same position, realizing it. Lost within the realm, not sure where she was or even why itself. Though she seemed to look at her with a skeptical gaze, a mixture of frustrations that came and went and even into her face like a judgement, like she did this before stepping back within a silence. She was observant one, Rin deducted by the way she acted.

Was this how she looked when she first arrived to the tundra?

"Banesteppe, a castle."

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